These days, in various areas like transportation (roads, railways, and the like), weather (typhoons, earthquakes/tsunamis, and the like), geographical regions (rivers, seas, mountains, and the like), and facilities (parking lots, gas stations/power supply stations, and the like), various kinds of information are collected, summarized, and analyzed, and demand forecasting, circumstantial judgment and, in some case, control/guidance are performed based on an analysis result. Especially, efforts are being made to perform power demand forecasting, automatic summarization, abnormality detection, and the like by adding a communication function to each wattmeter, and collecting pieces of information about power use states at a control center via a network. These are done for the purpose of implementing demand forecasting, circumstantial judgment, and control/guidance by adding a communication function to social information collection devices such as various types of sensors and surveillance cameras to be able to readily collect more information more automatically, and performing finer-grained analysis. As a method of transferring social information or analysis information from various sensors and the like, which changes in time series, a method of opening information to the public using the Internet is the mainstream. Along with advances in mobile terminals such as smartphones, the user can acquire information away from home.
For a social information providing system in such environment, the issue is whether it is possible to timely provide pieces of social information in various areas, which change every moment, when the user needs them. Especially in case of urgent necessity, for example, at the time of a disaster, the user needs social information to immediately determine the best action to be taken at the current position, and attempts to acquire social information by accessing the Internet or the like. In reality, however, the issue that it may be impossible to acquire necessary social information because line congestion or disconnection has occurred due to the influence of a disaster or the like is assumed to arise.
As described above, the issue is whether it is possible to timely provide social information when the user needs it. In reality, however, the issue that it is impossible to acquire necessary information due to line congestion or disconnection may arise.
To solve this issue, the present invention has as its object to provide a social information providing system for distributing, for each area, social information which changes in time series so that the user can acquire and browse it in an optimum format when necessary, and a social information distribution apparatus and a user terminal apparatus therefor.
Solution to Problem